China's growth rate slowed to 9 per cent in the third quarter, dragged down by the global credit crisis and a weak property sector, leaving the economy on course for its first year of single-digit expansion since 2002.
The fall in annual gross domestic product growth, from 10.1 per cent in the second quarter, confirmed that China cannot decouple from worldwide trends and reinforced expectations that the government will soon ease monetary and fiscal policy.
Annual growth in the first nine months was 9.9 per cent, well down from 11.9 per cent in all of 2007, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said this morning.
"I'm looking for slower growth in the fourth quarter because that's when I think the external side will start to show a more negative impact," said Tao Wang, an economist at UBS Securities in Beijing.
Economists had forecast third-quarter growth of 9.7 per cent, and the outcome disappointed the Shanghai stock market, which fell 0.73 per cent in the morning session despite strength elsewhere across Asia.
"A gloomy outlook lies ahead after the third quarter, and concerns about the slowdown now outweigh concerns about inflation," said Chen Jinren, an analyst at Huatai Securities.
It is not possible to pinpoint when gross domestic product last grew more slowly because the NBS does not publish updated quarterly data when it revises its annual GDP figures.
Some economists estimate there was at least one weaker quarter in 2004. However, the last time full-year growth failed to reach double digits was in 2002, when it was 9.1 per cent.
Interpreting the third quarter's statistics is tougher than usual because Beijing pulled out all the stops to reduce pollution during August's Olympics. This led to extensive factory closures as well as transport and visa curbs that hit output.
Industrial production slowed to 11.4 per cent in the year to September, the lowest rate since 2002, suggesting that the economy was losing momentum as the quarter went on.
However, the pace of retail sales and fixed-asset investment growth both accelerated last month, beating forecasts and providing reassurance to policy makers counting on domestic demand to take up the slack from falling exports.
China has been accounting for about a quarter of additional global output in recent years, devouring iron ore, oil and other raw materials, and will almost certainly leapfrog Germany this year to become the world's third-largest economy.
But headwinds have been stiffening.
"The weak global economic environment has definitely had a negative effect on China's own economic growth," the statistics bureau's spokesman, Li Xiaochao, told a news conference.
Reuters